


When the Grief Settles

by hannaenomia



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-16 03:28:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28699926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hannaenomia/pseuds/hannaenomia
Summary: A short, emotional one-shot about Dani and Jamie discussing grief on the anniversary of Rebecca's death."It struck Dani then that Jamie was looking for understanding and for empathy, not sympathy. Dani’s heart hurt even more at the idea that Jamie perhaps felt so very alone that she was desperate for someone to meet her in the garden of grief. There were so many emotions, Dani started to realize, that Jamie was hiding under the surface, waiting for someone who felt safe enough to share them with. She wondered if that someone was her."
Relationships: Dani Clayton & Jamie
Kudos: 18





	When the Grief Settles

**Author's Note:**

> This was a lot of me processing my own grief and I really just hope this gets to one person who needs to hear this as much as I did.
> 
> CW: Discussion of suicide (Rebecca's), but nothing graphic.

It had been a long Thursday for Dani. From Friday evening to Sunday evening, Hannah watched the kids so Dani could have some time off, even though live-in positions aren’t so cut and dry. She was always pulled in to homework questions, arguments, or requests for permission to do something. Somedays, she missed the kids and would find herself playing board games late into the night with them. Regardless, she always tried to finish up the next week’s lesson plan on Thursday night so she wouldn’t have to think about it again until the next Monday morning.

This particular Thursday, though, Dani couldn’t get herself to focus. There was no particular reason, she just wasn’t too keen on doing it, so it wasn’t until close to midnight that Dani finally finished it up and put it away. She trudged up to her room and immediately began to strip out of her clothes the second the door was closed. If she didn’t, she would end up falling asleep in her jeans.

Dani pulled a sweatshirt over her head and slid on pants. She preferred nightgowns, but fall was in full swing and Bly was a drafty house. The heater did nothing more than keep them from getting hypothermia. The cold floor radiated through her socks and Dani slid on her slippers. She had never owned a pair before, but once the temperatures dropped, she immediately went out to Bly with Owen during a grocery store run to pick up a pair.

As the au pair brushed her teeth, she wandered over to the bathroom window to look at the grounds. Everything was peaceful and quiet. It was calming to look over the perfectly kept gardens. Jamie had such a talent for it. No matter how many times Dani walked the grounds or looked at the landscaping, she couldn’t help but think how incredible Jamie was. 

The bathroom window was pointed towards the lake, even if the view was obscured because of how far away it was. Still, Dani could just make out a figure sitting in front of the water. Her eyes narrowed a bit and she paused her brushing. When she spit and put her brush away, she returned to the window to find the figure still there. Hannah didn’t go to the lake anymore so the only people it could be were the children and she didn’t know what they were doing out there so late.

She rushed downstairs and grabbed her jacket on the way out. Frustration pounded through her. Dani was exhausted, she just wanted to sleep, and here was one of the kids marching around the grounds at night. All the punishments went through her mind as she stormed across the wet grass. She could ground them, give them extra homework, make them do Hannah’s chores for a few days– probably Jamie’s too, since that woman could also use a break.

About ten feet away from the figure, Dani stopped. It wasn’t either of the kids. No, she would recognize that jacket anywhere, even in the pitch black. 

“Jamie?” She called. 

The gardner turned to look over her shoulder. At the sight of Dani, she raised a bottle of wine in the air. “Care to join the party?”

As Dani got closer, she could smell wine oozing off of the woman and she wondered how much Jamie had already drank. “I didn’t know you were still here. Do you want me to drive you home?”

“I’m good right here,” Jamie said and took another swig of the wine. Her whole bottle trembled and shook as the cold pierced her. Aside from her jacket, Jamie was wearing thin pants, sneakers, and a flannel. No wonder she was shivering. 

Dani, lips pressed tight and eyebrows pressed together, looked around at the lake, the grass, and the greenhouse. She walked inside the glass structure and found a pile of blankets usually used for picnics or bonfires. “You’re freezing,” Dani said as she stacked two blankets over Jamie’s legs and wrapped a third one around her shoulders.

For the first time that night, Jamie looked up at Dani– really looked at her. Her eyes were heavy, full of pain and unshed tears. The gardener’s face was stone cold with despair. As Dani searched the other woman, she stopped in her tracks and held eye contact. Pain almost radiated off of Jamie. Dani didn’t know why or what Jamie was feeling in that moment, but she couldn’t bear to look away, couldn’t bear to leave the woman alone. So she took a seat next to Jamie on the log, took the wine bottle from Jamie’s hand, and took a large sip, before handing it back. They were silent for a time. Jamie seemed to breathe a small sigh of relief at the company, though she didn’t acknowledge it. 

When Dani pulled her jacket sleeves down further over her hands, Jamie picked up the end of the blanket. “Come here,” she said. 

A feeling of frenzied anxiety flashed through Dani. She stared at the blanket and the space next to Jamie. A lump in her throat started to form and she tried to swallow it away, but it wouldn’t leave. Confusion started to pass over Jamie’s face the longer Dani just stared, so the au pair gave a nervous smile and scooted over. There wasn’t much space under the blanket and so her thigh had to be pressed up against Jamie’s in order to fit. It was the only thing she could focus on– the only thing she could feel besides the somersaults in her stomach.

Dani didn’t know exactly what she felt for Jamie, but she knew that every time she was in the room, Dani couldn’t think about anything other than her. Whenever she walked past Dani, her gut started to knot up as she watched Jamie saunter off. She found her mind gliding back to Jamie often, too often sometimes. 

But, this was all new for Dani. She didn’t know what she was feeling (her heart did, of course, it was her mind that questioned it). All she knew was that this was not how she felt about Edmund in all the years they had been together. Never did she watch him walk off, unable to keep her eyes from him. She never felt nervous at the idea of sitting next to him or staring at his lips as he talked. She never got lost wondering where he was and when she would see him next. No, she had never felt that way about anyone before. The worst part was, she knew Jamie wasn’t even thinking about her like that because Dani still couldn’t even manage to breathe the words into existence.

When she had told Edmund, she really thought she could finally exist as herself. When he died moments later, though, he had taken her freedom with him. Every time she looked in the mirror, or wanted to share that part of herself with someone, all she could feel was an overwhelming wave of guilt. It felt selfish of her to share it again when the first and only time she said it out loud, her best friend died. Once, Jamie told a story about an ex-girlfriend which only confirmed what Dani had quietly wondered about the gardener. She wanted desperately to share back, scream from the rooftops, who she was and who she loved, but she couldn’t. All she could share in return was a meager story about Edmund. The way Jamie had quietly nodded and looked away from Dani had broken the au pair’s heart. It felt like Jamie had shared that piece about her, hopeful that Dani would share it back, only to hear the opposite.

“Drink more,” Jamie said and handed the wine bottle back over. 

Dani tore her dazed look away from the moonlight on the calm waters and down at the bottle below her. She pulled her hand out from under the blanket to take the cold bottle. “What are we drinking to?” Dani asked. Before she got an answer, though, she took three large gulps hoping to drown out the thoughts and feelings mixed up in her mind.

Jamie looked out at the water in front of her. The au pair had been so deep in her own thoughts she hadn’t seen Jamie start to cry until a quiet sniff caught her attention. “Rebecca Jessel,” Jamie said. Her voice was monotone, strong– as if even the slightest bit of emotion behind the name would open the dam. 

The two of them had never talked about Rebecca. In fact, almost no one at Bly seemed to talk about Rebecca past Hannah’s retelling of the day they found the former au pair in the lake. The woman had simply vanished and they all went on like she had never been there. Every once in a while, Flora or Miles would share something about Rebecca. Usually it was just in response to Dani asking about their past schooling. Out of everyone, Jamie was the only one who had never once uttered Rebecca’s name in front of Dani.

“Were you close?” Dani asked, cautious. Clearly, Jamie was feeling Rebecca’s death heavier tonight than most others, but even so Dani wasn’t sure how to talk about someone who was never talked about.

Jamie took the wine bottle back and drank more. She rested it on her lap and nodded. “Yeah,” she whispered. She looked down at the bottle and pushed her eyebrows together. “I mean, I only knew the girl for a year, but she was one of the best friends I’ve ever had.”

Tears jumped into Dani’s eyes and pain throbbed inside of her. Images of Edmund being hit by the truck flashed through her mind and the grief and the guilt circled around her heart again. She took the wine bottle. “I lost my best friend, too,” Dani whispered. She drank again.

At the words, Jamie looked over at Dani with eyes full of pain. She searched Dani’s face for a moment. “You did?” Jamie asked. It struck Dani then that Jamie was looking for understanding and for empathy, not sympathy. Dani’s heart hurt even more at the idea that Jamie perhaps felt so very alone that she was desperate for someone to meet her in the garden of grief. There were so many emotions, Dani started to realize, that Jamie was hiding under the surface, waiting for someone who felt safe enough to share them with. She wondered if that someone was her.

“My fiance. Edmund,” Dani said. She looked out at the water, too. The moon shone on the water and reflected off in a perfect white light. As the water rippled, so did the light and it was easy to be distracted by it so as to avoid feeling the emotions stirring inside of her. “He, uh, he died. He was hit by a truck and he… he died.”

Neither one apologized to the other about their loss. Had the circumstances been different, they probably would have, but tonight, sharing the weight of their collective grief was enough for the two of them. 

They passed the bottle back and forth between themselves for a time, silent. Eventually, Jamie cleared her throat and said, “Tonight is exactly one year since Rebecca waded into the lake.”

“Oh,” Dani said, understanding now why Jamie was feeling it so much. “I– I didn’t know.”

“One year,” Jamie shook her head. “I could have been there. I should have been there. We got in an argument two days before. She was upset that Peter Quint had run off without her and I tried to tell her to just forget him and get back on track for her career. Shouldn’t have been so harsh.”

Dani set the now empty bottle on the ground beneath her. “Jamie, you had no way of knowing.”

Jamie’s face contorted with pain, “But I should have.” She looked at Dani, tears flowing down her cheeks. “Maybe if I just took a second to listen rather than push her… I keep going over that day in my head. What she was like, how she was acting. Trying to remember if anything was off that I missed, but I don’t remember anything. I just can’t understand it. I knew she was struggling, but there was so much for her. Why couldn’t she see it?”

“I don’t know,” Dani whispered. Jamie chewed on her lip and produced a second bottle of wine from the ground below her. It was already uncorked so she pulled it out and drank. “No one I’ve ever known has died like that.”

Jamie took a deep breath and looked at the stars above them. “It’s different. I can’t quite explain why, but it is. It wasn’t an accident or an illness. You can understand those things with enough time. But this,” she shook her head just once. “I think about it every day. How much pain must she have been in to make a decision like that? To just walk into the lake? What were her last thoughts? Most people, they die surrounded by love and family. They see their life flash before their eyes and remember all the good things. Did she see that? Did it make her regret it, but it was already too late? In that split second was she gasping for life, feeling it slip away from her?

“Everyday. Every fucking day. I walk by this lake and I think about it. People always say that suicide is a selfish way out, but they’re wrong. It’s us. We’re the selfish ones. We’re the ones too busy with our lives to think for a moment, maybe, this person we love is not okay. Maybe we should look, do something, say something. But, we go on. We think our errand or our smoke or whatever it is we’re preoccupied with is more important. We think that they’ll be there, waiting for us, when we get back. We’re the selfish ones.”

She raised the glass to her lips and chugged the wine until she coughed from the sting. As she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, a deep red stain formed and she stared at it through the darkness. Dani watched in silence, unsure what to say. No amount of “it wasn’t your fault”s would be enough in this situation. Jamie knew it— somewhere deep down inside of her— she just couldn’t remember it quite so much in that moment. That kind of comfort wasn’t what Jamie wanted, sitting in the cold starlight. Tonight, Jamie wanted to be heard and nothing else. The parasitic words inside of her needed to be evicted or else she wouldn’t make it much longer. Sometimes, truths are so poisonous to hold onto, it becomes more dangerous to hide them than to risk their admission.

Dani turned that thought over in her mind. She could feel her own thorny truths pushing against the back of her mouth. Her lip trembled under the weight of them.

“I broke up with him. My fiance, I mean.” The two made eye contact as Dani started. Her voice shook and she gestured for the wine bottle. “That’s why he got out of the car. He wanted to be as far away from me as possible, so badly he didn’t even look first. I don’t know about losing someone to suicide, but I get selfishness.” She scoffed at herself and rolled her eyes. “It’s like I’m floating in this pool of guilt. No matter how fast I swim, it never gets me closer to shore. It’s bogging me down. Like I don’t know anything else about myself anymore. Every time I look in the mirror it’s all I see.”

“Why’d you do it then?” Jamie asked. She looked over at Dani and they made eye contact. “Why’d you break up with him?”

The answer was right there on the tip of her tongue, stuck. She couldn’t form the words. But, Jamie sat there staring at her and she had just poured out her heart and soul. Dani could say this.

The au pair cleared her throat. “I, uh.” She almost choked on her spit and had to cough for a second. “I couldn’t marry him because I… I’m gay.” With the release of the words came a release of the weight on her chest. It didn’t matter if Jamie had feelings for her or not, Dani had said it and put it out there. “I’d gone 8 years without saying anything. I could have kept pretending. Waited until we were at home or literally anywhere else besides a busy street. I probably could have stuck it out and lived a fine life. And he would still be alive. My best friend would still be alive, even if he never talked to me again. It’s the most selfish thing I’ve ever done.”

Jamie didn’t know if she was expecting that answer or not. She didn’t know if Dani had feelings for her the way she did for Dani. She wondered if Dani had anyone in her life with the same identity. Tonight was not about that. It was clear that that wasn’t what Dani wanted tonight to be about. So, Jamie thanked her for sharing, genuinely, and they returned to quiet drinking.

After a bit, Jamie started sniffling next to Dani and she knew that the gardener was crying. She set a hand on Jamie’s back and rubbed circles on it. The crying got harder and Jamie tried to apologize through her tears. It wasn’t the kind of crying that’s loud and violent. It was the silent crying, the kind where the tears just stream and you can’t stop them. It’s not shock, it’s the settling of your pain in your bones when it seeps into you and pulses through you with every beat of your heart.

“Maybe we should go inside,” Dani whispered.

Jamie took a deep breath and tried to steady herself. She straightened up in her seat, wiping her eyes with the sleeve of her jacket. “No, no, I’m fine.”

“Come on, it’s late and it’s cold—.”

“Dani, I’m staying out here,” Jamie snapped. It made Dani jump. The gardener’s eyes closed. “I’m sorry, it’s just, I need to be out here. If I had been here that night, I would have been able to stop her. Houses like this are always haunted so maybe—.” She stopped herself and shook her head, making to grab for the blankets. “I’m being fucking stupid. You’re right, let’s just go back inside.”

Dani set her hands on Jamie’s lap to keep her from pulling the blanket away. “No. We’re gonna stay out here. All night if we have to.”

When Jamie looked away from Dani, there was more pain in her eyes than earlier. Her eyes traced the lake. They took in each ripple, each wave of a leaf, each sound of a cricket. “Time’s a beast, you know that? You always think there’s going to be more time, but eventually, you take it for granted so much you run out. No warning, no gut feeling. It’s just there and then it’s not. It’s pointless, if you ask me. Everyone’s going to leave someday. You give everything you have to someone thinking they’ll be there forever, but then they’re not. You can only do it so many times before you have nothing left for yourself.”

The au pair hesitated, not sure if she should say what she wanted to say. It could go either way. But, she couldn’t help but feel that it needed to be said. So, she readied herself and then she took Jamie’s hand. The gardener stared down at their intertwined hands and Dani could have sworn it was awe in Jamie’s eyes. Her thumb brushed over the back of Jamie’s hand and it made her heart jump.

“You have so much love to give,” Dani whispered into the darkness. “It would be selfish of you to keep it to yourself. But, it would also be selfish of you to give it all away to one person and have nothing left for anyone, especially yourself.”

Jamie sat in that for a moment and then nodded. They didn’t say anything else. The night passed just like that, their hands together, shoulders and thighs pressed against each other. 

When the sun began to rise and there had been no sign of Rebecca’s ghost, tears again sprung into Jamie’s eyes. Dani wondered if it was guilt and sadness that passed through Jamie in that moment. She hadn’t gotten the opportunity to do it over. But then, she noticed a small smile. 

Jamie had been there for Rebecca in the only way she still could and then came forgiveness.


End file.
